Muncie man fatally shot by officers after stabbing

A police action shooting left one man dead outside of a home on the southside of Muncie Saturday.

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A man was injured in a police action shooting outside of a home at 1317 W. 18th Street in Muncie Saturday evening. According to police, officers were responding to call regarding the stabbing of a female victim by the man who was shot. Police say the man was armed with a knife and refused to respond to verbal commands.(Photo: Jordan Kartholl/The Star Press, Jordan Kartholl/The Star Press)Buy Photo

MUNCIE - A Muncie man was fatally shot by city police Saturday afternoon, minutes after he allegedly stabbed a teenager in a southside mobile home.

Larry Dustin Stepp, 31, died at IU Health Ball Memorial Hospital, where he had been taken for treatment of what state police called “life-threatening injuries that he sustained from self-inflicted knife wounds, and from the officers’ gunfire.”

A witness told The Star Press that Stepp was shot up to five times in the chest – outside a mobile home in the 1300 block of West 18th Street – after he ignored the officers’ repeated demands to drop his knife.

State police– asked by Muncie Police Chief Steve Stewart to investigate the police-action shooting – said city officers were sent to the southside address at 4:19 p.m. after receiving a report of “domestic violence and possible stabbing.”

In an affidavit for a search warrant, authorities said a caller to 911 at first told a dispatcher a man was harassing her granddaughter, and then said he had produced a knife “and just stabbed (the girl) in the stomach.”

When two officers arrived at the scene, Stepp was outside “holding a knife with a long blade,” the affidavit said, and began to walk toward the officers.

The patrolmen gave “loud verbal commands for (Stepp) to stop,” the document said. He “continued to advance upon the officers with the knife” and they “discharged their duty weapons” at him.

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In the release, state police said a “15-year-old female stabbing victim” was found in the mobile home and taken to the hospital “for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries.”

Kim Brown, who lives across the street from the shooting scene, said she was drawn outside Thursday afternoon by a loud disturbance, and heard that a woman had been stabbed. Police then arrived.

“That guy came out the gate with the knife in his hands, and they asked him several times to put the knife down,” Brown said. “They didn’t try to Tase him. ... He just kind of lunged at them.”

State police said both Muncie officers at the scene fired gunshots. Brown said she observed one officer “shoot him three or four or five times, in the chest.”

Brown also said she was saddened that authorities did not allow Stepp’s mother to comfort her mortally wounded son before he was taken to the hospital.

“He never did wake up,” she said. “She just wanted to hold her son. They told her to get... back. All she wanted to do was see her son. ... He was handcuffed. He wasn't going to get up and go anywhere."

Brown said she believed Stepp had been "overwhelmed" by the circumstances he found himself in.

"Everybody's screaming, and he knows he messed up," she said.

Court records reflect only one misdemeanor conviction for Stepp, for disorderly conduct in 2013.

At a late Saturday press conference, Stewart said the two officers involved in the shooting would be on administrative leave pending completion of the ISP investigation.

He also said he would not consider releasing footage from the officers' body cameras until the probe is concluded.

While local police-involved shootings have been infrequent in recent years, this marks the fourth such shooting in Delaware County in the past 50 days.

On April 15, Muncie resident Storm Allen Smith, 26, was fatally shot during a struggle with a city officer near Jackson Street and the Muncie Bypass.

That incident remains under investigation by state police.

On May 6, William Oliver Jackson Jr., 53 – a suspect in a heroin-dealing investigation – was shot after he fled from a traffic stop on the city’s northeast side.

Those shots were fired by a city drug investigator who was standing on the vehicle’s side rail as Jackson sped away. The officer – who would suffer a fractured collarbone when thrown from the van – warned Jackson he would shoot if he did not stop the vehicle, authorities said.

Prosecutors ruled that shooting was justified. Jackson – who faces charges stemming from the officer’s injuries, and drug-related counts – was transferred from the hospital to the jail three days after being shot.

On May 27, Gregory Bruce Grider Jr., 26, was shot after he allegedly opened fire on two Delaware County sheriff’s deputies in a Liberty Township mobile home.

Grider was the target of arrest warrants, and the deputies were investigating reports he was holding a woman against her will.

The Muncie man apparently remains hospitalized. State police are also investigating the events leading to that shooting.

It is standard procedure for an outside agency to be asked to investigate a police-involved shooting.

Contact news reporter Douglas Walker at (765) 213-5851. You can also follow him on Twitter: @DouglasWalkerSP.